


stay at home & watch the sunset

by eraseallpicturesofron



Category: Shadowhunters (TV)
Genre: Established Relationship, Future Fic, Immortal Husbands, M/M, comfort with little hurt, happy ending :)), minimal angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-19
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24272170
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eraseallpicturesofron/pseuds/eraseallpicturesofron
Summary: “D’you come t’take me back to the real world?”"This isn't real?"(or: a hundred so odd years in the future, Alec and Magnus have found their way back to each other, as they always do.)
Relationships: Magnus Bane/Alec Lightwood
Comments: 10
Kudos: 101





	stay at home & watch the sunset

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [A Quiet Place](https://archiveofourown.org/works/20820095) by [glorious_spoon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/glorious_spoon/pseuds/glorious_spoon). 



> y'all this is very much inspired by "A Quiet Place" by glorious_spoon because immortal malec spending time apart but always coming back to each other is kind of my jam :') so! you guys should check it out!!
> 
> also the title is from "are you bored yet" for some semi-angst :)

When his eyes were closed, the past twenty four hours all felt like a dream. 

Opening a portal from the bustling city of Shanghai to a tiny farmhouse in the middle of nowhere ( _New Hampshire, of all places_ ), and crashing into Alec’s arms ( _his Alec_ ) for the first time in a decade and a half, Magnus was satiated by the feeling of warmth that only one person ( _his person_ ) could bring him.

Before Shanghai, it was Amsterdam, and before that it was Istanbul, and then Paris, where he and Alec had gone their separate ways. The parting hadn’t been on poor terms, it seemed to simply be inevitable, and it didn’t keep Magnus from happiness.

He hadn’t lost Alec. Alec hadn’t lost him.

( _“You and me,” Alec had promised that night, with a tight grip on Magnus’s hand despite his trembling lip and quavering voice, “you know we’ll always-”_

_“Find our way back to each other?” he had finished, squeezing Alec’s hand back with a fierceness that he hadn’t expected to come out._

_“Yeah. Yeah, we do.”_ )

The past few years, he had been okay. Better than okay. He was happy. Really happy, too, not the kind that featured a plastered on smile and nights of drinking and dancing and ignoring the pain. Even so, that didn’t take away from the dreamlike feeling of Alec’s arms around him for the first time in far too long. 

The dream was far from shattered when Alec’s voice, muffled from the side of his mouth pressed against the rough cotton of the pillow case, pulled Magnus away from his thoughts and into the present.

“D’you come t’take me back to the real world?” 

Rolling onto his side, back to Alec’s half-sleeping form and facing the open window, he took in the view, silent for a moment. The warm glow of the sun just barely peeked out from behind the clouds, which sat not far from the horizon line. Off in the distance, in the overgrown field of grass and wildflowers, a herd of cows grazed without any cares in the world. 

If anything, the past years he had been asleep in the wide world’s lull, and now he was finally awake. 

“This isn’t real?” he asked, rolling back over. 

Alec’s eyebrows drew together and the ever-familiar wrinkle creased his forehead, and he scoffed, “ _Mag_ nus.”

“No,” Magnus smiled, more to himself than to Alec, as his voice became soft and his gaze dropped from Alec’s eyes. “I want you to be where you’re happy.”

And he looked it, too. 

Happy. 

With the exception of the furrowed brow, which had faded as his face softened, the stress lines that Magnus had been so accustomed to seeing over the past decades were faint. When Alec smiled back, the crinkles around his eyes looked as though they came from years of smiles that made his cheeks sore and laughs that made his ribs hurt. His under eyes were free from the dark shadows that shaded them after days and nights of no sleep. 

For an instant, there was a tug at Magnus’s heartstrings, a firm tightness in his chest, upon the realization that this obvious happiness came from years without him. He had been happy too, of course, but he had been immortal for centuries. He had learned to adapt.

He just hadn’t expected Alec too, as well. 

The quiet lull of the room lasted for a beat too long and Magnus cut through it with a sharp laugh, “Even though this is the last place I’d expect from you, city boy.”

“Hey! I can be one with nature.”

“Clearly.” 

The last time Magnus had seen him, they’d been in Paris, and they both had known it was time for them to part ways. 

Alec had been quiet then, more so than his usual reserved self, and wore a smile that didn’t quite reach his eyes. He looked the same as he always had, for decades and then some. The same partially mussed up hair, the same clean shave ( _every morning, without fail_ ), the same boyish face that had yet to age, even when nearly everyone he loved grew up and grew old. 

A different man laid across from Magnus atop the mattress. 

Alec’s dark hair curled around his ear lobes and up the back of his neck, with some dark strands falling over his forehead the same way that it did when he was young. A light beard shaded his cheeks, still a stubble that proved that he hadn’t given up on shaving entirely, though every single morning was out of the picture. 

He was curled up in an over-sized sweatshirt that might have been as old as him, the neckline frayed and stained by the same color of paint that the front door of the farm house was painted. Magnus thought, looking at the man across from him, that if he were to look in the closet, he would fail to find a suit jacket or formal slacks. 

The man across from him was relaxed, and “relaxed” wasn't a word Magnus would have used to describe the Alec that he had parted from in Paris.

“You look great,” he promised the warm eyes and genuine smile that looked back at him. 

“So do you.” Alec traced a finger over the row of golden studs that crawled up Magnus’s ear, the same color as the streak that Magnus had glamoured into his hair only a week before. He shook his head, wistful, before whispering, “Beautiful.” 

“I didn’t come here to make you leave,” Magnus said, “I missed you.”

“I missed _you_ ,” Alec said back, as though he hadn’t said it a hundred times already that day alone. “Are you staying?”

Twelve years they had been apart, give or take a few months, Magnus reminded himself, as if the thought was not always sitting in the back of his mind. Twelve years. 

“If you’ll have me.”

Alec rolled his eyes without hesitation, that part of him hadn’t changed. He had always told Magnus that he wasn’t good with words, as if that could possibly be true, but he still chose not to use them. Instead, he linked their fingers together and shot him a long look. 

“I promise I’ll feed the chickens,” Magnus added.

“ _Magnus._ ”

“Mm?”

Alec’s face contracted as though he had a million things to say, words that Magnus knew he never would. This old farmhouse, isolated from people, was always going to be more of Alec’s scene: be it rural or urban, with or without the familiar sound of New York City taxis and chaos on the streets, his husband always savored solitude.

Sooner or later they would drift, as they did, not out of love but out of the need to be in their own elements: the world would never stop nor would Magnus stop for it, while Alec would continue to hold on to the last bit of himself in the changing world. 

“You’ll get bored hare,” Alec would have said, “Not that I’d blame you, but it would still hurt us both. I don’t know when I want to leave

“It’s pretty quiet here,” was what he said instead, and Magnus failed to stifle a snort as he reached across the mattress. As his fingers trailed against the prickly stubble on Alec’s cheeks before brushing his hair away from his forehead, the years apart didn’t matter. The inevitable seemed avoidable, the uncertain future seemed more certain, and the universe seemed to be telling him that he was where he was supposed to be.

And who was Magnus to question the universe?

“Sounds like a dream,” he whispered.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading :)))  
> if you liked it, let me know: comments/kudos/bookmarks are the best <3


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